Queen of the Sciences

In which Dad and I read aloud a series of questions I put to him in a notebook on Christmas 1990, and discover that the more things change the more they stay the same. You can read the transcript on my website. Merry Christmas!

This is Dad's talk for the Virginia Synod's annual Power in the Spirit conference, from July 2020. You can also watch the video version with questions and answers from Pr. David Drebes on YouTube.

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To wrap up season 2 of Queen of the Sciences, not to mention wrapping up an exceptionally fraught election year (at least for those of you in the U.S.), we tackle St. Augustine's magnum opus, The City of God against the Pagans. Turns out there isn't actually very much about the two cities at all, but we range with Augustine across a wide assortment of issues: theodicy, providence, human community, the uses of history, and the nature of evil.

Fun fact: the Roman empire never actually fell, and certainly not due to barbarian invasions. It just sort of petered out due to its own stupid infighting. Food for thought, eh?

By the way, we had a technical glitch, so my audio track is pretty muffled, but Dad's is fine, and fortunately he did more of the talking on this one anyway.

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Notes:

1. I quote from Dyson's translation of The City of God; this is the abridged one Dad mentioned; you may want to check out newer translations by New City Press; and this is the audiobook version I listened to, which was pretty well narrated except for the occasional pronunciation error, as in "the tropical interpretation of Scripture." Pretty sure he meant "tropological."

2. For a mind-blowing take on what really happened to the Roman empire under Christianity, check out Peter Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom.

3. Dad discusses the nature of evil in his Beloved Community, pp. 783–790. See also his forthcoming Joshua commentary on the nature of human community.

4. The accounts of evil that aim not only to harm the body but to destroy the soul that I mention toward the end of the episode are Endo's Silence, Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, and Orwell's 1984.

5. Earlier in 2020 I did an issue of Theology & a Recipe on Augustine, called "Late Have I Loved Thee," imagining a late-in-life encounter between Augustine and his concubine. I didn't realize at the time John Updike had already done this; if I may so, I think my version is a lot more faithful to the principals and ultimately the more compelling. Judge for yourself, and then sign up for Theology & a Recipe on my website!

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The eponymous unlikely marriage is that of marriage—with Christianity. After assembling an impressive number of reasons why we should have expected the Christian faith to want nothing whatsoever to do with exclusive sexual pairing, we then change directions and show why, after all, Christianity opted for marriage, and in so doing once again engaged in a doctrinal revision of inherited notions of God. In light of which, we then engage a contemporary Catholic theologian's take on Christian marriage. Spoiler alert: we don't even go near the usual hot-button topics. If you feel the need for outrage, Twitter is waiting for you.

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Notes:

1. Some relevant stuff I've written: "Marriage Matters," "Blessed Are the Barren," and "Luther's Hagiographical Reformation of the Doctrine of Sanctification in His Lectures on Genesis"

2. See also Dad's Luther and the Beloved Community, ch. 8 on "The Redemption of the Body: Luther on Marriage"

3. Kant ruined Christian ethics with The Critique of Practical Reason

4. For the range of Luther's take on the nature of divine and Christian love, see the Heidelberg Disputation (esp. #28) and his explanations of the Fourth and Sixth Commandments in the Large Catechism

5. Sarah Ruden, Paul among the People

6. Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage

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From a Tokyo street parade advertising the services of a shady prosperity church to the global pandemic, with pit stops in pain, death, suffering, and theodicy, this episode is sure to be a real crowd pleaser. Also, why you should go to the emergency room for a broken bone or infected wound but try Jesus for chronic conditions, death being the most chronic condition of all.

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Notes:

1. Here's a short article I wrote on the International Lutheran-Pentecostal dialogue's meeting in Madagascar in 2019, where we discussed the topic of healing and deliverance. God willing and the creek don't rise, the final report will be released in 2021. You may also like the chapter on "Prosperity" in my book A Guide to Pentecostal Movements for Lutherans

2. A whole slew of OT studies by Claus Westermann

3. Becker, The Denial of Death

4. The first of Luther's 95 Theses issues a call to lifelong repentance

5. Dad takes up the theme of "purgatory now!" in Luther vs. Pope Leo

6. On the Blumhardts, father and son, see respectively Ising's Johann Christoph Blumhardt: Life and Work and Zahl's Pneumatology and Theology of the Cross in the Preaching of Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

7. Not a whole lot on Nenilava just yet, but I'm working on it—look for the first-ever full-length work on her next year. Meanwhile, check out the entry on the fabulous online Dictionary of African Christian Biography.

8. Dad refers to the "service of the word for healing" in the Lutheran Book of Worship—it's actually in the companion to that hymnal, called Occasional Services

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After a lonnnnng delay, we finally finish up the Acts of the Apostles! Check out our previous episode on the First Two-Thirds of Acts, then dive in to this one for the riveting topic of... wait for it... rule of law and due process. No, really, it's good stuff. Plus, why Paul appeals to Caesar but never actually meets him, or, how to avoid soteriological confusion.

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Notes:

1. Ferdinand Christian Baur on Acts

2. This is my favorite map of the missionary journeys of Paul

3. We refer to this excellent article by my friend the NT scholar Troy Troftgruben, "Slow Sailing in Acts: Suspense in the Final Sea Journey (Acts 27:1–28:15)” JBL 136/4 (2017). See also James R. Edwards, “Parallels and Patterns between Luke and Acts,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 27/4 (2017).

4. I double-dipped on this topic... it was the subject of my e-newsletter Theology & a Recipe earlier this year. Check it out (and then subscribe!).

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Dad talks to Sarah about the inspiration for and design of her new translation of Luther's Small Catechism, specifically intended for memorization.

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Friedrich Nietzsche demolished the traditional foundations of religious belief. Does that make him a foe—or possibly a friend? One way or another, we can't get away from him. In this episode Dad walks us through Nietzsche's tirades against all forms of fake religious assurances and insidious social control to find, surprisingly, compelling reasons to embrace the crucified and risen one.

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Notes:

1. You can find translations of everything Nietzsche wrote without any trouble online. In this episode we talked in particular about The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil, The Genealogy of Morals, and The Antichrist.

2. Dad and his co-author Brendt Adkins engage with Nietzsche's philosophy in their book Rethinking Philosophy and Theology with Deleuze.

3. The book about saints and their radical will to power that I mentioned is E. M. Cioran's Tears and Saints.

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Dad talks to me about my "weird little stories" in Pearly Gates: Parables from the Final Threshold.

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Possibly the best thing Luther ever wrote (for my money only the Large Catechism offers the best competition for that claim), "The Freedom of a Christian" turns 500 this year and accordingly merits even more attention than usual. In this episode Dad and I explore the two halves of the treatise, one each for "A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none" and "A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all," drawing out the powers of faith and joyful exchanges that illuminate the apparent contradiction—and how to live as both a lord and a servant half a millennium later.

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Notes:

1. You can find older public domain translations of "The Freedom of a Christian" online (often under the title "On Christian Liberty"). In print, try the Luther's Works translation (which is what we read from in this episode) or the newer translation by Mark Tranvik. We also discuss in passing the Large Catechism, Small Catechism, and 1519 Galatians commentary.

2. This is the Luther seminar I teach every November in Wittenberg

3. Dad's one and only work of fiction: Luther vs. Pope Leo (I admit I was skeptical at first, but it's actually really good—and if we have any Methodist listeners out there, you'll be amused to learn that John Wesley saves the day... sort of)

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